


every day I fight a war against the mirror

by thekaidonovskys



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Body Image, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-War, issues with tattoos, mild-ish PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:20:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2030046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekaidonovskys/pseuds/thekaidonovskys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It came at a price,” he says. “To understand them, I had to learn how to fear them.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	every day I fight a war against the mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted by Tumblr user thekaidonovskys

The first morning, Newt wakes reluctantly. He’s still exhausted from the day before, crashed so hard last night that he forgot to get undressed, and is contemplating going back to sleep until tomorrow morning when Hermann knocks at his door and, in pretty damn polite tones for Hermann, reminds Newt that there’s a lot of work to still be done and as much as he respects Newt’s tiredness, it  _is_ ten-thirty. Newt changes clothes hurriedly, too busy trying to find his spare pair of glasses to think about anything else. 

They spend the day filing the appropriate paperwork, dealing with meetings and video conferences and emails and by the end of the day Newt’s just about done in. But when Hermann, slightly awkward but seriously determined, asks Newt back to his room to ‘discuss their Drift findings’… well, Newt knows he’d have to be mental to pass that up.

The second morning, Newt wakes with his arms wrapped around Hermann, Hermann’s face - not exactly  _soft_ in sleep, but a little more relaxed anyway - just inches from his. He’s got very little else to even  _consider_ considering, and they finish the rest of their conversation, in which resolutions and decisions and even a few promises are made. 

The samples from Otachi don’t arrive until late afternoon, and Newt spends his whole evening getting them all preserved and put where he wants them. He sends Hermann off to bed and tells him he’ll see him tomorrow - because despite their previous night, they’re not quite ready to move in together just yet. So Newt heads off to bed, tosses and turns a little without Hermann (is it weird that he’s that used to his presence already? It’s probably weird. Newt doesn’t care), and finally falls asleep with the promises of new samples to play with in the morning. 

The third morning, Newt wakes up with Yamarashi three inches from his face, and damn near shrieks the Shatterdome to the ground. 

Tendo’s his closest neighbour - it takes less than thirty seconds before there’s a pounding on his door. “Newt?” he calls and Newt swears under his breath as he tries to still his racing heart. “You okay?”

"Yeah, fine, all good."

Tendo doesn’t leave. “Want to open the door and show me that?”

Newt sighs and hauls himself out of bed, blindly grabbing a long-sleeved shirt and throwing it on. He’s shaky and his heart is still beating a bit madly, but he doesn’t let that show as he opens the door to find a sleep-rumpled, shirtless and clearly worried Tendo waiting on him. Newt can’t help himself - he smirks a little. “Don’t run around the halls like that, man,” he warns. “Your harem will be all over you.”

"Half of ‘em left yesterday," Tendo reminds him. "Seriously, though, that was one hell of an uproar. Nightmare?"

There’s his out. “Yeah,” Newt says with a bit of a shrug. “No surprise.”

"You’re okay?"

"Uh-huh. Sorry about the noise. Did I wake you?"

Tendo nods, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “It’s alright; would’ve woken soon anyway,” he says, and Newt looks a little closer. Without his usual pompadour he looks dishevelled as it is, but there’s something more to it and Newt raises an eyebrow, getting a smirk in response. “Well I did say only half of them had left,” Tendo points out. “Plenty of techs still needed, and with plenty of reason to… celebrate.”

Newt rolls his eyes. “Don’t let me keep you then. Get back to whoever and however many of them you’ve got in your bed.”

Tendo salutes and leaves. Newt knows there’ll only be one person in his bed and that there is decidedly no harem, but it’s always fun to joke. And it’s nice for Newt to have a bit of a laugh before he has to return to the issue at hand. 

But he does have to return. He has to close the door and turn back to face himself and deal with what’s going on. Because between navigating the world after the breach, tossing up options and deciding not to part from Hermann, and deciding to  _be_ with Hermann, Newt hasn’t have a lot of time to think. He didn’t think he _needed_ to think.

He does. 

He needs to think pretty damn hard because the sight of his own tattoos is something he’s grown used to waking up to every single morning and suddenly this morning it nearly gave him some kind of fucking  _heart attack._ And even now he’s refusing to look down, refusing to take in his arms or chest and if he’s been doing this the past few days he hasn’t noticed, but he’s noticing  _now_. 

Because it’s not a nightmare that startled him. It’s not something that Newt can wake up from and shake off and go on with his day. It’s on his skin. 

But he’s a scientist. He can’t just base this off one bad reaction. After all, he  _could_ have been waking from a now-forgotten nightmare and his tattoos actually aren’t a problem at all. It’s unlikely, but Newt can’t just jump to conclusions based on one piece of data, no matter how much the alternative scares him.

He works up his nerve, stands in front of the mirror, and takes off his shirt.

Everything goes a little hazy then.

After awhile Newt finds himself on the floor, curled in a ball with his arms around himself, trembling. His shirt is back on and his throat is raw as if he’s been sobbing, but all he knows is that he’s weak and tired and this isn’t something he can just will away. 

The Kaiju are on his skin and Newt is afraid of himself.

***

Perhaps his eyes are a little too wide still when he enters the lab, or his hands noticeably shaky. Either way, Hermann watches him for a bit when he sits down, then clears his throat when Newt looks up. “Are you feeling okay?” he asks.

“Hm? Yeah, fine. Why?”

“Tendo came by and mentioned you had suffered a nightmare.”

Bloody Tendo. “I’m okay,” Newt promises - because he is right now, with his skin covered, so it’s not _technically_ a lie. “I think bad dreams are the norm around here right now.”

Hermann nods. “I’ve had a few myself,” he says, and turns back to his work. 

Newt wants to ask after that but, afraid that he might open the door for Hermann to question him in return, keeps silent. After all, he has some more pressing matters to worry about right now, something to the tune of  _how the fuck do I cut up Otachi without rolling up my sleeves?_

It’s pressing enough that it keeps Newt at his desk doing paperwork until just after lunch, at which point he draws Hermann’s attention again. “You haven’t begun on your samples,” he says.

“Brilliant deduction. I can see where you get your genius reputation from.” Hermann looks a little hurt and Newt immediately feels bad - they haven’t stopped bickering just yet, certainly not, but it’s now softer and far less personal and a far cry from what Newt’s just initiated. “Sorry,” he says, contrite. “Guess I’m still kinda grumpy. Not enough sleep and all that.”

Hermann’s expression softens. “Of course. Then perhaps you shouldn’t be working with scalpels after all.”

The outs just keep coming. “That’s what I thought,” Newt says - true enough, but for a very different reason. “And there’s so many reports to do, gotta save the fun stuff for later.”

“That’s the consequence of running about in the Bone Slums,” Hermann says, the hints of a smile twitching at his lips. “They can get away with asking your opinion on the quality of their Kaiju shelters.”

Newt smiles. It’s a little wooden. “Like they’ll ever use it again,” he says, and looks back down at the page, picking up his pen again. 

_Sorry, Hermann,_ he thinks,  _but the consequences of the Bone Slums are far greater than you imagine._

His hands twitch convulsively on the cuffs of his shirt. 

***

He doesn’t actively set out to hide it. But once the day passes into night, when Hermann suggests spending the evening (and night) together and Newt declines due to ‘exhaustion’ and finds himself back in his room looking anywhere but at his skin as he showers and dresses for bed, it’s definitely reached the point of secrecy. 

And it’s not for lack of trust, or any kind of belief that Hermann might laugh or scorn him. It’s just…

Well, Newt knows Hermann’s always hated his tattoos. Just about everybody does, after all. And to try to confide in anybody about how he’s feeling now is more likely to end up in a great big  _well that’s what you get_ rather than any kind of sympathy. 

He doesn’t deserve sympathy, after all. He inflicted this upon himself.

Newt’s sleep is restless, but at least this time he wakes up to cloth and blankets instead of Kaiju.

***

He can’t put off the samples any longer. 

Hermann steps out for a few hours in the morning to work with Tendo on the final Jaeger decommissions, and Newt takes the opportunity that’s given to him. He snaps on his gloves, hovers his fingers over his shirt sleeve, then shakes his head. 

It’s going to be difficult enough to put his hands on this creature without having to see the others as he does it.

So Newt turns up his music and sings along, off-key and loud, and makes his focus so narrow that the samples in front of him cease to be anything but tissue and blood and venom sacs. His sleeves are highly inconvenient, flapping about and trying to get in the way, and Newt has to work a little slower than usual.

Which, unfortunately, is why he’s still at it when Hermann comes in.

“How was the meeting?” he calls over as Hermann heads to his desk to drop his files. 

Hermann glances up briefly. “Quite straightforward,” he says, looking back down. “There’s some discussion about the salvage of  _Cherno Alpha_ and  _Crimson Typhoon_ and naturally representatives from Russia and China will be involved with the legal claims, but that’s all out of my hands thankfully. I just have to ensure a safe decommission, and then I can move on to closing down my work.”

Newt looks over at the blackboards and chuckles. “That’ll take you about three years.”

Hermann smiles, glancing over his shoulder at them, then looking back to Newt. “Most of it is now obsolete,” he points out, “and I have records of almost -“ Hermann stops and frowns. Newt blinks back as innocently as possible. “Almost everything,” Hermann continues slowly. “The hard part will be cleaning it all off.”

“Sentimentally or physically?” Newt asks, returning his attention to his work. “If it’s the latter, I can get up there and wipe it down when you’re done, if you like.”

There’s a pause, then he sees Hermann nod. “Thank you.”

And he knows Hermann’s caught the inconsistency, knows how badly he wants to ask, and is very grateful that he’s staying quiet. Because if Hermann does ask, Newt knows he’s gonna have to tell him, knows he can’t get away with lying with Hermann anymore and doesn’t  _want_ to lie to Hermann either. 

He’s not stupid. It’ll come out soon enough. Newt just hopes that maybe he can be a bit closer to dealing with his ridiculous panic before it does. 

Except life doesn’t work that way, and his sleeve starts disintegrating. 

His  _fabric_  sleeve, to clarify, and it doesn’t get far before Newt feels his forearm begin to burn and realizes what’s happening. He jerks his hands out of the specimen that his sleeve has draped itself in and bolts to the decontamination sink, running the water over his arm. His sleeve is still melting away when Hermann arrives at his side with a pair of scissors and quickly cuts away the offending fabric, just below his elbow. Then he strips off Newt’s gloves and stops him from stepping away, keeping his arm under the water for much longer than Newt normally would himself.

Newt, understanding a little better how it feels to stand by and watch someone he cares a lot about be at risk, lets him. And it’s easier this way, too, easier to let Hermann dry his arms off and check his arm for any damage, because then Newt doesn’t have to look. He can let his eyes unfocus, just as if his glasses were removed, and only see his arms as a swirl of colour. It’s easier. 

Hermann pronounces him safe but  _stupid_ , and Newt takes it. “You’d best get another shirt,” Hermann says. “And I think you should avoid the samples for the rest of the afternoon. Do some of your paperwork instead.”

Newt mock-groans to hide his relief - because really, as tedious as paperwork is, it sure beats anything else right now - and follows Hermann out of the lab, who insists on walking with him to his room to fetch another shirt. He waits outside, because Hermann is all kinds of adorable prudishness, and Newt doesn’t look at himself, just like this morning, as he strips off the ruined shirt and pulls on a new one. As almost an afterthought he adds the leather jacket, which prompts a raised eyebrow from Hermann. “Bit cold after getting soaked,” he explains. 

“Hm.” Hermann takes his arm - it’s becoming a thing, and it’s really cute - and they head back to the lab. “I apologise for calling you stupid,” he says after a few moments of silence. “It was unnecessary.”

Newt smiles. “It’s okay,” he says. “If you started being 100% nice to me instantly, I might keel over with the shock.”

Hermann rolls his eyes. “I would like to think,” he continues, now seemingly a little hesitant, “that if anything were wrong, you would feel that you can come and talk to me. Now that is it apparent that I do…  _care_  and all.”

His first thought is his tattoos, but Newt pushes that away immediately. Hermann’s talking about burns and injuries, about not suffering alone, just like Newt’s told him to let on if his leg’s being uncooperative. It’s not about his  _mind_. “I know I can talk to you,” Newt assures him. “If my arm starts to hurt again, you’ll be the first to know, promise.”

Hermann looks as if he’s about to speak again, then simply nods. “Okay,” he says. 

They spend the rest of the afternoon in companionable bickering over how much information to put into their Drift report and Newt forgets for awhile. 

***

“Newton,” Hermann says the next day, and Newt looks up. “Come here?”

Hermann puts down his chalk and stands. Newt follows, but instead of heading for the couch, Hermann meets him in the middle of the room, right down their dividing line. One hand grips his cane firmly, the other lands on his forearm. Newt doesn’t mind the touch, already a little too accustomed to Hermann being close, but it’s when Hermann’s got his sleeve between thumb and fingers that Newt’s a little wary. “What are you doing?” he asks quickly.

Hermann looks at him. “I’m checking your arm for any burns,” he says. “Is that alright?”

Newt swallows, then nods. It’s normal enough, after all - Newt always refuses to go to medical if he gets hurt, so usually Hermann checks up on him. “Yeah, okay,” he says.

Hermann looks down and gently slides Newt’s sleeve up and Newt can’t look down, can already feel the sweat beading at his temples and he stares over Hermann’s head, blinks at the wall and waits for -

“As I thought,” Hermann says, and looks back up to meet his eye. “You can’t look at your tattoos.”

There’s no point in arguing, or in anger. “Are you surprised?” Newt asks flatly.

“A little, yes,” Hermann admits, but with no judgement apparent in his tone. “I thought that they would now be a trophy of sorts, a sign of victory.”

Newt sighs. “They are. They still… I still love them. I just - not right now. Not while they still mean something too… too  _raw_.”

He feels Hermann roll down his sleeve, then take his hand. And now Hermann leads him to the couch, sits him down and keeps just a little bit of distance between them. “Pretend that I have no idea why this is painful for you,” he says, “and explain?”

Newt sighs again. “Otachi,” he says, and hopes it’s enough. Which, of course, it isn’t, and he has to keep going. “I - I Drifted. And then I got chased and then I nearly got eaten and then I Drifted again and… I got what I wanted. I got my up close encounter with a Kaiju. And it almost killed me and suddenly what the Kaiju were  _meant_ something. I could’ve  _died._ And that sounds so self-centered, because so many died, but - but -“

“But it meant nothing to you that you could truly comprehend,” Hermann completes. “When you realised you could have died, you realised that this was how all those other people had felt before they  _had_ died. You realised what the Kaiju had done to this world.”

“Get out of my head,” Newt half-heartedly jokes.

“Can’t,” Hermann reminds him. “Or, at least, I can’t get your head out of mine.” Hermann looks down, playing with Newt’s fingers gently before speaking again. “So until you have had time to heal from what you went through, you can’t quite handle seeing them on your skin?”

“Pretty much. It’s not… not weird, is it?”

Hermann squeezes his hand. “Have you heard about Ranger Hansen yet?”

“Herc? No? What about him?”

“He slipped out in the middle of the night. Packed up his things and left.” Newt raises an eyebrow and Hermann nods. “Not even a word to Tendo. It’s pretty clear he wants to be alone. Mako and Raleigh are currently on whichever island they managed to get themselves to without the press learning of their departure. I don’t believe it will be long before Tendo finds an excuse to leave, either. Because now that the celebrations are over, the enormity of what we went through is hitting people, and nobody wants to face it.”

Newt nods. “I don’t blame them. But - it’s not like I’m planning on doing that -“

“Of course not. You couldn’t - and honestly, nor can they. Nobody can outrun the memories, but they are doing their best by getting away from here. At least if they don’t have to look at the Jaegers, at the survivors, at the news bulletins and photographs and reporters, then they don’t have to be reminded constantly of what happened.” Hermann’s hand slips out of his to rest on his forearm, just under his sleeve. “You do not have that luxury,” he says. “You cannot escape from your own skin.”

And Newt, horrifyingly, feels sudden tears well up. He turns his head a little, wiping his eyes, and sighs shakily. “I never thought about after,” he says. “I think - I don’t think I thought there would  _be_ an after. Not really. But now there is and it’s over and we won and they’re supposed to be gone but they’re  _not_.” 

To others, it might sound ridiculous. Hermann just nods. “They’ll never be gone, not really. They’re in our nightmares, in the gaps left by those they took -“

“On my skin,” Newt completes bitterly. “Why did I ever want to see a live one?”

“Because you wanted to know,” Hermann says gently. “Because you’re a scientist, darling, and information is your lifeblood and all you had were half-dead samples. It told you about their toxicity and organic matter, but it didn’t tell you about  _them._ About why they were here, why they wanted to destroy us, and that was what mattered to you. You knew it wasn’t just random and you wanted to know why. You needed full understanding.”

Newt looks at him for a moment, before shaking his head. “You got all this from the Drift?”

“No,” Hermann says, smiling. “I got that from the horrified look on your face when Raleigh said we should just blow them up - and from sharing a lab with you for years. I  _do_ hear what you say when you talk at me, you know.”

“Aw,” Newt says, returning the smile. “Look at that, you  _do_ care.”

The Hermann of a few weeks ago would have snapped at that - now Hermann just goes a little pink and nods. “I think that’s become apparent.” He squeezes Newt’s hand again. “Now; is there some way I can help you through this?”

Newt slowly shakes his head. “I wish you could but… but it’s the aftermath, y’know? We’re all having it in some way or another, the survivors - left to bear the burden of those who died for us. We’re grateful as fuck and glad to be alive but that doesn’t make the nightmares and random freak outs any easier. And I don’t think there’s anything you can do to make it better. Just time and patience in letting me get used to myself again.”

Hermann nods. “I suspected as much. There is one thing I want to do when you’re ready, though.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. When you feel you are okay with discussing your tattoos, I would like you to ask me what they mean to me.”

It’s an odd request - Newt’s known since day one that Hermann disdains his tattoos for their garishness and unprofessionalism. But he shrugs and accepts it, as long as it means Hermann will stop looking at him with that slightly pitying worry. “Can do,” he says, and stands. “Now; back to that Drift report. Can I put in it that I learned that you were the one who kidnapped Max when Chuck was being a brat?”

“Certainly  _not_.”

At least some things never change. 

***

Other things have to change. For Newt’s sanity. 

They’d had the lights on the first time they slept together, but Newt had been so transfixed on seeing Hermann’s body for the first time he hadn’t even considered his own. Now, however, he quietly requests that they keep the lights off, and Hermann easily complies. It adds a little to the intimacy in its own way, and there’s no judgement in the dark. 

He keeps his sleeves rolled down as he cuts up Kaiju samples, tucking the cuffs into his gloves so they don’t get in the way. There aren’t too many samples left anyway, and far less urgency over those he has, so Newt can take his time with them as well. He tries not to remember that the organs he’s slicing up once powered a monster that tried to devour him. 

Tendo asks when he’s going to get the next masterpiece to add to his collection. Newt, the back of his neck prickling with repressed unease, chuckles weakly and shrugs. Hermann swiftly moves the conversation along - of course Tendo catches it, Tendo catches everything, but he’s polite enough not to comment - and doesn’t bring it up later, even though it’s clearly on Newt’s mind. Newt lies awake that night, images of Otachi on his skin plaguing him. He doesn’t know whether he wants it or wants to want it. 

He deals with the reporters and UN meetings and talks calmly and concisely about the Kaiju and their Drift findings. He works with oceanographers, studying the aftermath of the slaughtered Kaiju and ocean toxicity levels. He smiles for cameras and receives numerous job offers every day and lets life go on.

But Newt’s frozen. 

He can’t go back, can’t move forward. His own skin has him trapped. 

***

He has a freak out in front of Hermann, and it’s hell.

As promised, he goes up the ladder and cleans off the boards, and gives a lot of credit to Hermann as he does because that thing is precarious. It takes awhile and a lot of stretching and by the time he clambers back down his sleeves are covered in chalk dust. Without thinking, Newt rolls them up, then freezes, staring down at them. His heart begins to hammer and he feels sick and the reaction, as always, is swift and uncontrollable. He doesn’t quite go back to the slums, but it’s a near thing and he might  _actually_ be dying right now. 

But if the panic is hell, Hermann is the angel that sweeps in and rescues him. He rolls down Newt’s sleeves, careful not to let his fingers brush against Newt’s skin - which Newt is so grateful for right now, he can’t bear the thought of being touched - and then gently guides him to the couch. He brings him a glass of water and sits with him and waits while Newt gets his nausea under control and calms himself back down. 

“Thanks,” he says after awhile.

“I didn’t do anything,” Hermann says gently.

“I know. That’s what I’m thanking you for.”

“Ah. Then you’re very welcome.”

Newt curls into him a little, trying not to make it too obvious, but Hermann easily slips an arm around him and they stay there long after Newt’s heart has slowed to a normal rate. 

***

It gets a little easier, eventually. All things do. 

Just like getting the tattoos the first time, they slowly become a part of his skin again. The refusal to look at himself in the mirror or roll up his sleeves fades, and he can let the tattoos roll back into the usual swirl of colour he’s used to. They lose their definition and become no more noteworthy than his glasses and it’s just how they’ve always been.

Except, they still catch him. Sometimes that swirl degenerates into the harsh lines of Kaiju; sometimes the colours are simply enough on their own to remind him. His heart still jolts and his skin feels sharp and electric and it’s that sudden, powerful moment of fear, that adrenaline spike that screams for him to run from a non-existent danger. It might be happening less, but it’s still happening and Newt would really rather it stopped.

He can’t get through the rest of his life pretending his tattoos aren’t what they are. He has to face them head on, face his fear for good. 

He knows something that might help.

***

Hermann opens the door, looking a little surprised but not displeased. “You’re not usually awake this early,” he says as he steps aside to let Newt in. “Has something happened?”

As usual, Hermann’s room is neat as a pin despite it being just after eight in the morning. Newt shakes his head and sits on the edge of the bed. “Nope. I just woke up and decided it was time.”

And before Hermann can ask what he means, Newt rolls up his sleeves and rests his forearms on his knees. He ignores the way his hands are trembling. 

“Hermann,” he says, eyes fixed on his arms. “What do they mean to you?”

After a long moment of silence, Hermann pulls up his chair and sits across from Newt, hovering his hands for a second before resting them in Newt’s. “It’s no secret that I detested them when we first met,” he begins. “But then, I detested  _you_. The way you dressed, the way you spoke, your enthusiasm… everything about you was too much. Too  _real_. And I didn’t detest you at all - I was afraid of you. I was afraid of how deep I was with you already.”

Newt knows this already, of course, but it’s still pretty nice to hear it out loud. “Yeah,” he says, not quite sure how to respond because this isn’t going where he thought it was. “I was the same. Couldn’t quite reconcile you to the man of those letters and emails. I think it was the sweaters.”

Hermann rolls his eyes - Newt knows he knows  _that_ all too well as well. “Neither of us gave a good first impression,” he reminds Newt. “But neither of us were particularly receptive to meeting new people. It was understandable. What I’m trying to get at is that, while I haven’t rectified aloud my opinion of your body modification, you should know that it wasn’t long after the first meeting that my opinion did change.”

“Okay,” Newt says slowly. “For the better?”

“Definitely. Because I stopped and looked and let myself understand.”

And this is what’s important. “What did you understand?” Newt asks. 

Hermann pauses for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “I understood that nobody ever quite saw you right,” he says. “Many people thought you were fearless - ridiculously so. Pilots had little respect for you because they thought you were mocking the magnitude of the Kaiju. Nobody understood that you were just as terrified as the rest of us, that you were so afraid that we wouldn’t be able to beat them. But you were the leading expert on the Kaiju: you couldn’t hide under your desk every time you had to identify a new toxin and how to treat it, or discover what kinds of weapons would be needed in the new Jaegers to get through whatever outer plate they had developed. You had to keep going. And in order to do so, you did the bravest thing possible.”

“Did I?”

Hermann nods. “Fear is crippling - but you turned your fear into art. You put it on your skin, where you couldn’t ignore it. You wore it with you every single day and used it to fuel your work. You didn’t let your samples become  _just samples;_ you knew what they were at every moment. You never hid from what the Kaiju were. And do you know what else I noticed?”

“What’s that?”

“Spinejackal, Taurax, Yamarashi, Ceramander, Atticon,” Hermann says as his eyes drift up Newt’s and across his still-covered torso, mapping out their patterns anyway from what can only be Drift memory. “All Kaiju that never took out a Jaeger or a pilot. You honoured the successes.”

“Well of  _course_  I did, I couldn’t…”

“No. You couldn’t. But many thought you could - many thought that you might do anything in your power to, instead of fighting against the Kaiju, keep them coming so you could keep studying them.”

Newt shakes his head hard. “God no. No, I never could. They  _fascinated me_ , because they were like nothing we’d ever seen and - and it was kinda like every cool monster movie I was raised on come to life, but only at  _first._ Then people were dying and I know I’ve said it never really - they never really frightened me until it nearly happened to me, but I’m not  _actually_ stupid enough to believe that having the Kaiju around could be _good._ They wanted to kill us. I wanted to get rid of them so they couldn’t… but I didn’t want to do that without knowing  _why_. I was scared of them but it wasn’t the kind of fear that prompted me to simply blow them up because they were bad. It was… I had to respect them, because, in their own way, they mattered. They were powerful enough to destroy us and I needed to know why they wanted to. And just because I had to face one and actually became properly scared of it doesn’t mean I respect them any less and their meaning hasn’t changed.”

And when Newt stops for breath, he realizes he’s stopped shaking. 

Hermann’s nodding. “I know,” he says simply.

Newt looks back down at his arms, and it’s there. The amazed, overwhelmed but  _fascinated_ fear that prompted the very first design, and the new understanding that came with each subsequent one - not just understandings about their poison or different vulnerabilities for the Jaegers to fight against, but understandings about  _them._ And now, finally, the knowledge that he’s needed. 

“It came at a price,” he says. “To understand them, I had to learn how to fear them.”

“Fear can be fought against,” Hermann tells him. “Fear can fade. And they are gone - defeated. In no small part, thanks to you.”

Newt nods. Now’s not the time for humility. “Gone but not forgotten,” he says. “But that’s how it should be. We’re never gonna forget the Marshal, Chuck, the Kaidonovskys, the Wei triplets… and we can’t forget what they fought. What we all fought.”

“Precisely. And remember, love, you were brave. Reckless and headstrong and stupid, but brave nonetheless. You faced the Kaiju when they were alive - certainly you can face them now as images, designed by your own hand, on your skin.”

Hermann’s got such a nice way with words. Newt tells him so, and smiles when he goes pink. “Really, though,” he adds, because making Hermann blush is lovely but it’s not really his purpose right now. “You’ve helped put a lot into perspective. I can’t promise I won’t still jump now and then, but I think I’m gonna be okay now.”

“There’s no rush,” Hermann reminds him. “This is the time for healing. Make sure you do it right - you deserve the time to look after yourself.”

“I love you,” Newt says without thinking, then frowns when Hermann’s eyes go wide. “Oh. Um. Too soon? I mean, you already knew…”

“I did,” Hermann says, a little quiet. “I just didn’t expect -“

“I’m not taking it back,” Newt says quickly. “But I can just… not say it again, if it’s -“

“It is far from bad. Naturally I love you in return, I was just unprepared for you to say it aloud just then.”

And now Newt’s understanding the shock factor. “Oh,” he says again. “Yeah. I get it now.”

They sit and look at one another for a moment before Hermann suddenly laughs - and Newt  _really_ loves his laugh. “Well, that’s one way to terminate a serious conversation.”

Newt grins. “I’m not complaining,” he says, squeezing Hermann’s hands. “Besides, I’m not the only one struggling with the aftermath, am I? We should talk about you.”

“It’s of little importance -“

“Oh, that’s a pity. I was going to suggest that in order to stop the Drift-induced bad dreams you needed someone in your bed but if it’s  _of little importance_ …”

And Newt has to laugh as he watches Hermann try to work his way out of this one.

***

Of course he ends up in Hermann’s bed. Newt wraps his arms around Hermann and reminds himself that if Hermann doesn’t flinch away from his touch, he shouldn’t either.

**Author's Note:**

> All credit to Tumblr user hermannsparka for this idea and thanks for allowing me to write it. 
> 
> Title from "Don't Let Me Get Me".


End file.
